college football. for bammers.

January 30, 2013

'Football-Season-You' VS. 'Offseason-You'

So SEC fans, ever wondered what’s the difference between you
during football season and you during the offseason? Besides hours and hours of
free time and a much healthier outlook on life?

Let’s do a quick run down.

Football-Season-You
is a lunatic.

What would your neighbor think if next Saturday you set up a
tent in your front yard, invited over a bunch of college buddies and started
drinking at 11 A.M. all because you were really excited about something that
was coming on TV at 2:30 in the afternoon?

Face it, Football-season-you is a lunatic.
Football-season-you may or may not start drinking at the same time Chick-Fil-A
stops serving breakfast. Football-season-you may or may not eat Chick-Fil-A
later that same afternoon while still drinking.

Football-season-you does all kinds of shit that, if judged
on its own merit, would have you committed to some sort of rehab/mental
institution. But it’s OK, because you’re standing under a tent. And thousands
of other people are doing the same thing.

It’s perfectly normal to be outside in muddy tennis shoes
right now eating finger food with some people you went to high school with.
Sure it is.

Why don’t you like that person you’ve never met? Because of
the t-shirt they’re wearing? Got it.

It’s 9:30 A.M. on a weekend, what else are you going to be
doing, drinking coffee in your comfortable slippers? Who likes to drink coffee
in their own slippers?

I’ll tell you who does, your better half: Offseason-you.

Football-season-you
has no concept of logical use.

Did you just walk through a slight drizzle lugging a heavy,
expensive electronic device from inside your house so you can use it outside
your own house? You’re goddam right you did. Why? So you can watch it outside
your house. Who wants to watch things inside their own house? No one.

It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to make the
tailgate better.

In the name of football season, you’d drive your fucking car
sideways into your house and turn on the radio if some guy in a jersey said it might
make the tailgate better.

What other event would make you tempt the universe by radically
altering the intended use of things?

Seeing as how you’re leaving the house, wouldn’t it make
sense to buy cooked things? Fuck no, let’s cook our own things. I’ll bring my
grill and some uncooked things.

Is it really warm and comfortable in your den? Sure. It was
also really comfortable in your Mom’s womb, and you eventually left there. Why?
Because you knew you had to get dressed, sit in gameday traffic, find a place
to park, and tailgate for at least three hours before kickoff.

Again, making sense is not applicable here. If everything
had to make sense, football season would be fucked.

‘Oh, I love this
movie. Quick, let’s load the TV in the car and go watch it outdoors with a
bunch of people in raincoats.’

Not gonna happen.

Football-season-you
will spend $8 on a magazine that tells you the names of players you read about all
week at work.

About to walk into a family dinner? Quick here’s an $8
magazine that tells you the names of people you already know. Seem like a
rip-off? Don’t worry. For that same $8, you get pictures of your nephews in
sport coats mixed in with full-page advertisements for Bryan hot dogs.

Remember your Uncle Harold? The one the penchant for tall
tales, inappropriate jokes and stiff drinks? Well here’s a bio on him. It says
he has penchant for tall tales, inappropriate jokes and stiff drinks. Yippity
fucking do. How much you wanna bet if you walk into a Men’s restroom, it’ll
have a wall urinal?

Don’t worry, paying for dumb obvious shit you know better
than to pay for is a part of being a fan. Are you working your way up to owning
a 4th hat for anything else? What other hobby would you get so into
that you’d pay $10 a month just to read message board posts about said hobby? How
many polo shirts do you own that are embroidered with your favorite morning
show?

Hopefully, none. Because that would only take up drawer
space from that next official team polo that’s going to replace that shitty
official polo from last year that’s now officially unofficial.

Offseason-you will
never get too worked up to use your own furniture.

When’s the last time you stood up in your own living room
and paced around the living room because you were so nervous who was going to
get the last rose on The Bachelor?

Did you pay $1,100 for that love seat? Yes. Why? Because
your wife liked it. When did you buy it? That time your wife liked it. When are
you going to use it? Not right now because it’s 3rd-and-11 and our
O-line has been getting beat by their pass rush all fucking day.

What are you going to do, sit down in your own house? Hell
no. There’s 2:00 left in the game. Only a crazy person could utilize their own
furniture at a time like this. You’re going to do what normal people do. You’re
going to stand up and pace around like Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Sure, to an outsider, it might look like you invited over a
bunch of 1929 stockbrokers for a social hour. Who gives a shit about outsiders?
What do they know about how this one play is the Most Important Play That Ever Happened since the Last Most Important Play That Ever Happened?

Football Season You
is willing to pay hundreds/thousands to see something live that you can see
much better from home.

Offseason-you, no fucking chance. This principle does not
work in the offseason.

Who would stay at home and watch Breaking Bad in HD, when
you could spend thousands of dollars, buy seats to a live taping, find a hotel
room, load up the car, take time off work, plan a bunch of expensive Breaking
Bad-centric events for days before the episode, stand outside in a field
outside AMC and eat and drink for four hours, and land a seat 500 yards away
from the scene you’re trying to watch? Oh, and then do the same thing next
Sunday?

I’ll tell you who would stay at home: Everyone. Including
Offseason-you.

What’d you think about that awesome Jesse Pinkman scene? Oh
that’s right, you missed that part being at the taping. Don’t worry, you’re
only a few feet away from the action, so to find out all you’ll need to do is
text a friend who’s miles away at home.

See, you were there, so you didn’t get to see the thing that
was happening there as good as the people who weren’t there. But don’t worry,
at least you DVR’ed the episode you were at. Meaning one day very soon you’ll
figure out what the fuck was actually happening at the thing you paid to see
actually happen.

Football-season-you
loves cussing at TVs. Offseason you can’t even find anything on TV.

“Are you fucking
kidding me, Storage Wars?? That is horseshit! No way that locker cost $800!!
Dammit. That is the worst bid I have ever seen! You shut your Yea hole, Dave
Hester! There is no way you just found a Mickey Mantle rookie card in a
loosely-tied black garbage bag! This is rigged, these producers just got paid.
‘Hey I wonder where I should store this priceless valuable? Oh I know, a
fucking black garbage bag.’ How you get pay the sponsors for that one Hester?”

No one gets that worked up about Storage Wars. Hell, no one that has ever had existing plans on any
said day has ever even watched Storage
Wars. Or Pawn Stars. Or Dirty Jobs. Or Nail Me, the new A&E show about illegal immigrants who sweep up
clippings at a Korean nail salon while turning tricks at night to help make
ends meet.

Offseason-you is
going to learn how to do a bunch of new stuff this offseason.

You know how when you go through a break-up you always get
out more, find new interests, download a shit ton of crazy new music on iTunes,
and otherwise widen your horizons? All that time you spent having routine sex
and watching movies you don’t like is suddenly wide open. So you fill it with
all kinds of new and interesting things. And then you drop those things once
you get into the next relationship.

Congratulations, now you know what it’s like to be an SEC
football fan.

Because face it, you little die-hard romantic. You go
through a break-up every January. Just don’t go sending any psychotic text
messages quite yet. You’re getting back together in August. You’ve got 7-8
months of the new you, so step on it.

You could go the workaholic route and lose yourself in your
job. You could take the Renasaince Man path and discover some new hobbies. You
could play the broken-heart role and sulk in your pajama pants on Saturday
nights while watching old games on your DVR and crying into a box of Kleenex.
Or you could do all three.

Suddenly, you’re drinking less, exercising more, reading
more, writing more, spending days at a time outside, meeting new people and
doing all kinds of great new things, you feel great, you feel fantastic, you
could totally get used to th-

Wait is that the new
Athlon season preview? I wonder where we’re ranked… (sits on couch).

Football-season-you
can’t wait for that thing that just ruined your previous weekend.

What in the name of battered wife syndrome is going on here?

Remember how, just last Saturday, you curbed-stomped an
ottoman when a few college sophomores blew a 14-point lead in the 2nd
half, which led to a redshirt-freshman kicker missing a makeable kick in OT,
which led to you having a Tourettes séance along with 6-7 other people dressed
in some variation of your exact same outfit?

Who cares about that, it’s Wednesday. And you just have this
feeling about Saturday.

Not last Saturday.
This Saturday. The one that’s going
to right all the world, not make you want to kick three puppies in rapid
secession. The one that’s going to let everyone else in on that little secret
that just you know.

Never mind that you sound like a degenerate gambler about to
lay down the twins’ college fund on black because your lucky song just came on
the casino-owned speaker system.

Nevermind that every talking head, former pro athlete and
well-respected journalist says you have no fucking chance. You have a feeling. What do they have, facts? Fuck facts. I bet
that Russian hockey team had a bunch of facts too until Kurt Russell got all up
in those guts and told them Hell was coming with him and shit.

They don’t know. You
know.

You love football season, right? So it only follows to logic
that it would love you back, right?

Right?

Hello?

Face it,
Offseason-you has way more respect for itself.

Offseason-you would never tolerate this type of
disproportionate loyalty. Let’s say you have a couple you just love to death,
so you invite them to your house a dozen times a year. That one time you had
them over, you had the greatest time ever and still talk about it to this day.
Then five of the next twelve times you invite them over, they eat all of your
food, wake up the baby, kick over barstools and shit on your floor.

Offseason-you isn’t gong to tolerate that kind of
‘we-had-a-good-time’ to ‘you-shit-on-my-floor’ ratio. No way. But
Football-season-you will not only consider that a pretty good year, you’ll
convince yourself to go around telling people it’s something to build on. Maybe
in Year Two you’ll only be cleaning up 2-3 couple-shits a year. The sky’s the
limit. And then maybe one year, no one
will take a shit in your living room.